How Do You Move a City?

Zothecula writes "The town of Kiruna in Lapland, Sweden, is known for its Jukkasjårvi Ice Hotel and for hosting the recent Arctic Council summit. It also sits within the Arctic Circle, on one of the world's richest deposits of iron ore. Now in danger of collapse due to extensive deep mining, the city center is to be relocated."

Chinese

[SJHillman]

Ask the Chinese. They moved 1.3 million people, including several cities, to make way for the Three Gorges Dam.

Re:Chinese

[sixsixtysix]

Said mining company also built the high school ($4million), which I didn't appreciate during time I was there, but after seeing other shitty, cookie-cutter public schools around the country, I take great pride of having attended. I do believe it had the first (or one of; definitely before the white house) indoor swimming pools. Sample of documentary about it. [youtube.com]

Bitter Local

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice to see my hometown on Slashdot!

Personally, I view the move as a necessary evil.
I prefer the old Town Hall to the plans for the new one, the relocation plans are realistic but will locate the town in a valley, (we're currently on an mountain) and I doubt the competency of the municipal politicians who are supposed to represent the citizens side in the negotiations with the (in my oppinion) much more powerful and skilled mining company.
We will get a cool cable railway though town, though. Unless it gets scrapped due to budget concerns. (Hint: it will.)

There are also worries that Kiruna will become a new Malmberget, a neighbouring community that has been split up by mining activities by the very same company.
Houses might lose their value [google.se] (Googletranslated) and risk standing alone next to the ravine in the years between ones and ones neighbours relocations.
Not moving isn't really an option, as the mines employ a huge share of the towns population, either directly or via subcontractors.

There's more information about the competition at the Swedish Association of Architects website:
Town Hall competition, Googletranslated [google.se]
City Center competition, Googletranslated [google.se], PDFs in english to the right.
(Note that the winning team are cited as sources in TFA.)

Posting as AC as I didn't get an account ten years ago and missed out on those lovely low number IDs.
And the neighbouring villages name is Jukkasjärvi. It is a Finnish/meänkieli name, and they don't even use "å"! (Except in Swedish loanwords.)